


How We'll Get Home

by irisbleufic



Category: Jamie Marks is Dead (2014), One for Sorrow - Christopher Barzak
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Conversations, Awkward Crush, Awkward First Times, Awkwardness, Bickering, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Confessions, Difficult Decisions, Disability, Do not translate without permission or copy to another site/app, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Fear, Fear of Death, First Time, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Joyful, Late Night Conversations, Love Confessions, M/M, Mythology References, Names, Neurodiversity, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power of Words, Queer Character, Queer Themes, References to Depression, Regret, Requited Love, Requited Unrequited Love, Running Away, Second Chances, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Tenderness, Use Your Words, Words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2020-08-31 22:57:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20248018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: They walk silently through the gloom, hand in hand. Just as Jamie is tempted to turn his head back toward the land of the living, to see if the light has faded, Adam says, “Don’t look back.”“Why?” Jamie asks, tilting his head onto Adam’s shoulder as Adam’s arm encircles his waist.Instead of a lecture on mythology, which probably doesn’t apply to them anyway, Adam sighs.“I think they’ll find me there,” he says softly, his breath stirring the fog. “What’s left of me.”Jamie processes the conjecture, drawing a swift, sad conclusion. “Gracie will be the one to…”Adam gives a taut nod. “If she doesn’t leave like I told her to. She shouldn’t look back, either.”





	1. Using Our Words

** _Murder_ **

Adam wants to blame what he’s seeing on Gracie’s vodka mixer. The apparition looks as real here on the riverbank as it had looked standing in Gracie’s back yard, looks just like Jamie always had when Adam had seen him in passing.

_I scratched my name in the ashes_, Adam thinks, paralyzed. _I gave you myself too late._

“What are you waiting for?” Jamie asks, a perfect imitation of how he’d sounded in life.

“You’re not real,” Adam insists, clutching his backpack-strap tighter, refusing to budge.

Jamie blinks, but it might be a trick of the light glinting off his glasses’ cracked lens.

“Don’t be frightened,” he says with bold, but fragile candor. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I’m not frightened,” Adam replies, which isn’t exactly the truth. He’s _terrified_.

“You can call me Moony,” suggests Jamie, too glib for comfort. “Everybody does.”

Gut twisting like he might vomit, Adam stands his ground. “I never liked that name.”

“Me neither,” Jamie says, heartbreakingly relieved. Even his posture is the same.

“I won’t call you that, then,” Adam promises, understanding it’s too little, too late.

Jamie turns, no longer facing the river. He blinks behind the fractured right lens.

“Thank you, Adam,” he says. “I never thought anyone would be able to see me.”

Every failure to voice his anxious longing, every squashed desire to _do something_ about Jamie’s perpetual state of torment at school is a stab in Adam’s gut, his sides, his heart. That day in the locker room weighs heaviest of all, too recent not to have some kind of correlation.

Whether Jamie had been murdered or his death had been accidental, both malice and inaction are to blame. Adam hates himself for always hovering nearby, always maintaining watchful orbit, but never bending close enough to touch.

He had wanted to touch Jamie more times than he can bear to admit.

“I see you,” Adam says, the last of his terror fading. “Gracie can, too, I think. She’s just scared,” he goes on, relieved to be making even an indirect confession that might hint at his own shameful cowardice.

“Don’t be shy,” Jamie says, coy as he approaches. “I know you want to try it.”

“Try what?” asks Adam, uncertainly, his grieved heart stuttering in his chest.

“Take off your clothes first,” Jamie suggests, taking another tentative step.

_This is what I have left_, Adam thinks, stripping without hesitation.

“Go ahead,” Jamie continues once Adam’s down to his boxers. “Get in.”

For a split-second, Adam thinks Jamie means the river. _That’s fair_.

Jamie watches, intent as Adam steps over the police tape and lies down.

“Close your eyes,” he says, hovering closer. “Can you help me, Adam?”

“Yes,” Adam vows, eyes falling shut. He’ll never ignore that voice again.

“I knew it,” replies Jamie, with anticipation. “I knew it would be you.”

“It could have been Gracie,” Adam says with reluctance, “couldn’t it?”

The November air turns biting as Jamie whispers, “She took them.”

Holding his breath, Adam keeps perfectly still as Jamie joins him.

“Took what?” he asks, trembling as their elbows don’t quite brush.

“I’ll show you,” Jamie promises, fingers grazing Adam’s in the dust.

** _Sorrow_ **

Once the fire’s been crackling for a while, Adam lets his guard down. It’s kind, what Jamie is doing for him—kinder than he deserves. The old barn is drafty, but dry, and the knowledge Jamie had found it necessary to get permission from another ghost speaks volumes to what Adam doesn’t know about the ownership of their hometown’s abandoned spaces.

Jamie sits next to him on the blanket, so close their knees almost touch. While Jamie’s presence isn’t warm, it isn’t chilly, either.

“Let’s play a game,” he suggests, lighthearted.

“Okay,” Adam agrees, returning Jamie’s smile.

“I’m going to tell you a story,” Jamie says, “and then you tell me one.”

“What kind of story?” Adam asks, molten anxiety pooling in his belly.

“A story about me,” Jamie says, fidgeting. “Something you remember, like this.” He adjusts his glasses, a gesture Adam must have watched hundreds of times from behind Jamie in homeroom. “I remember this one time when you won first place at the track meet, which meant you’d go to State. The team picked you up on their shoulders and carried you around.”

Adam’s stomach drops even as his pulse begins to race. “You were there?”

“Of course,” Jamie says, as if his presence had been a foregone conclusion. “I like watching you run. It’s like reading a poem. You sort of run that way, like a line in a poem.”

Adam can’t speak for several seconds, his thoughts unraveling with each swift, successive beat.

“Thanks,” he says, shifting so their knees bump.

Startled, Jamie gives him a long, wistful look.

“It’s your turn. Tell me one about me.”

Adam shoves his hands in his puffer-vest pockets. His right fist closes around the double-sided photo he’d cut from the yearbook. His face on one side, Jamie’s on the other. He’s been carrying it with him, and now he realizes why.

“Okay,” Adam agrees, knowing what he needs to say.

“Come on, slowpoke,” Jamie teases, unbearably sweet.

“No, I, um,” Adam says, “I remember this one time. I think it was spring, because it was really muddy. I was running past your house, and I saw you in your bedroom window. Uh, at least I think it was your bedroom. I think—I think you saw me, too. You know, neither of us waved.”

Whether it’s a trick of the firelight or not, Jamie’s eyes glow with vivid, indisputable life.

“Tell me again,” he says. “What was I wearing? Did I look happy or—or sad?”

_This shouldn’t be hard_, Adam thinks, remembering every time they’ve been close to each other since it all started. _I won’t let this be hard_.

Adam scoots closer, and then flops back on the blanket like he remembers Gracie doing when he’d sat next to her on her bed. From this angle, Jamie looks like he’s flickering.

“You didn't look sad,” Adam admits, rolling onto his side. He plucks at the blanket, inviting.

Jamie lies down, too, like he’s afraid he might scare Adam off. “Did I look like anything?”

There’s a slow-growing racket up at the farmhouse, escalating voices and glass shattering.

“Like you were waiting,” Adam says, letting his fingers creep toward Jamie’s pale wrist.

“I was,” Jamie breathes, leaning forward as Adam touches him, “but I’m not anymore.”

** _Sunflower_ **

Pillow and food in hand, in the face of Gracie’s generosity, all Adam can think about is getting back to the old Apollo, back to Jamie. His anxiety is unfounded, though, because Jamie comes to him no matter where he is.

“I think that I love you,” Gracie says without warning, “and I just wanted you to know that.”

“Thanks,” Adam says, turning as she drives off. Too little, too late, even though he isn’t hers.

Later, as he’s lying by the fire with Jamie crouched next to him, he tries to speak, but can’t.

“I like it here,” Jamie says, slipping one hand beneath the blanket’s edge. “Just me and you.”

Adam nods, grateful that Jamie doesn’t expect him to say anything. He lifts the blanket.

Semblance of breath escaping him in a rush, Jamie crawls underneath, settles, and tucks his head against Adam’s chest. He curls his lean arm around Adam’s waist—shivering, _frozen_.

“We could stay like this forever,” Jamie mumbles, shifting till his lips brush against Adam’s jaw.

“We could,” Adam agrees, trembling. He folds Jamie close, gives him as much heat as he can.

“Somewhere warmer, though,” Jamie quips, and it’s the first joke Adam remembers him making.

Although he doesn’t remember falling asleep, Adam wakes alone to the sound of a police radio.

The officers haul him home without comment. There’s so much shouting and fuss from his mother and Lucy, the paralyzer, that he sits stonily silent on the sofa until they leave the room.

He doesn’t speculate on what they do in his mother’s bedroom. Part of him knows the answer.

Waking to a Travel Network feature on _the tropical and pristine coast of Belize_ makes Adam reach for Jamie, about to say that’s where they should go—but Jamie isn’t there.

Fuck You Frances, on the other hand, is waiting with her malice and a box of matches. Like drowning, this, too, is something Adam deserves after burning her derelict farmhouse.

He flees to his room as she pursues him with vicious curses and a lit match dropped for each.

Frances claws her way through Adam’s bedroom door by the time Jamie appears from the closet—answering Adam’s cries, drawing him inside. That darkness is familiar now, a comfort.

Shielding Adam with his thin, angular body, Jamie holds Frances off with menacing compassion.

“Oh, how nice,” Frances sneers. “Your dead boyfriend to the rescue! He thinks you’re gonna save him. Did you forget he’s more like me than you?”

Adam clings to the hem of Jamie’s shirt as Jamie replies, “Leave him alone. He’s not yours.”

“So he’s yours?” Frances challenges, brandishing her rusty kitchen knife in Jamie’s face.

“Adam?” Jamie asks, uncertain, turning to gaze at Adam. The answer was never clearer.

“I’m his,” Adam tells Frances, catching Jamie’s wrist instead of his borrowed shirt. “_His_.”

Adam waits on his bed, uneasy, while Jamie escorts a tearful, defeated Frances into the dark.

“Where did you take her?” he demands when Jamie returns, reaching for him without thought.

Jamie goes to him, sitting down beside him, taking Adam’s hands in his. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Was it to that tunnel?” Adam asks, cautious, holding fast. “What happens if you don’t go?”

“I would never do that to you,” Jamie replies. “Not now that we’ve found each other.” He tilts his head, leaning, fearless as he asks for what he needs, for what Adam will give. “Can I have some more, Adam?”

“More what?” Adam asks, even though he knows that answer, too, as he tilts his head in kind.

“Words,” Jamie says, closing the remaining distance, finally letting their foreheads touch.

“Close your eyes,” Adam whispers, setting his fingertips along Jamie’s jaw. Too little, too late.

“I’m ready,” Jamie replies, clasping Adam’s wrists. His touch is startlingly light, expectant.

“Butterfly,” Adam says, his nose bumping against Jamie’s. They’re both unbearably warm.

“In my mouth,” Jamie pleads quietly, nuzzling Adam’s cheek. “Say them in my mouth.”

“Pollywog,” Adam murmurs, and it’s their lips that brush at last. “Popsicle—” a swipe of his tongue, also without conscious thought “—_sunflower_.”

There’s no need to ask for the removal of clothes, not with a kiss so forthright and undemanding.

“Gracie tried this with you, didn’t she?” Jamie asks, entirely unashamed. “Did it work?”

Adam shakes his head, pressing an apologetic kiss to Jamie’s cheek. “She tried twice.”

“You didn’t try to stop her,” Jamie says, but it carries no judgment. “You wanted to see.”

Adam shrugs, resting his head against Jamie’s shoulder. “Nothing happened either time.”

“You didn’t feel anything,” Jamie murmurs consolingly, pressing his hand over Adam’s hammering heartbeat before sliding it lower to rub at his belly. “Do you want to see if…”

“I feel something,” says Adam, gasping as he guides Jamie’s hand lower. “You make me…”

Jamie strokes him like that for a little while, until Adam tenses, too close, and kisses him again.

“Do you feel something?” he asks hesitantly, mirroring the touch Jamie had used. “Can you?”

“More words,” Jamie whispers, eyes falling shut, arching against Adam’s palm. “Our words.”

“Touch,” Adam murmurs, slipping his unsteady hand beneath Jamie’s waistband. “Want. _Try_.”

They undress each other all the same, bodies folding together beneath Adam’s wrecked covers.

They kiss and kiss, limbs tangled, until Adam comes. He’s cradled against Jamie, languidly moving even through the aftershocks, teary-eyed.

“That was so good,” Jamie praises, breathless, jolting when Adam rolls him onto his back.

“I want you to feel it,” Adam mumbles, desperately nuzzling Jamie’s hair. “Tell me. Please.”

“You’re so good,” Jamie says, even breathier than before, tensing under him. “_Adam_.”

Once Jamie has finished, too, the last thing Adam does is remove and set Jamie’s glasses aside.

** _Love_ **

The confrontation is uglier than Adam would like, but he knows now what it was that Gracie had taken. He can’t disagree; she didn’t have any right.

The suicide note in all its despairing glory, the _words_—those belonged to Jamie.

“Really doesn’t matter, Adam,” Jamie says, in tears. “Not anymore. We can make this work.”

“Make what work?” Adam says in shock, and then hates himself for still being afraid.

“This,” Jamie replies disconsolately, catching Adam by the shoulders. “Me and you.”

The rest of the confrontation is even uglier. Adam insists he can’t fix anything, can only make do with what time they have—which, surely, is finite.

They accuse each other of not understanding while Gracie looks on, unable to get between them. She must feel responsible for bringing them together—for finding Jamie in the first place, for being the only other person to turn up on the riverbank and pay sincere respects. 

Gracie must feel guilty, too, for creating the vacuum in Jamie that Adam’s words have flooded to bursting. Her eyes are red with it, raw from whatever hours she’s spent mourning her misplaced, unrequited affections. 

She knows what it is she’s done, knows her part in the story she started, the story that Adam must finish. Adam wishes he could reassure her, say that none of this is her fault, but the awful truth is that the note’s concealment has cost them incalculable grief.

Adam knows what it is _he’s_ done, in failing to recognize what he’d seen the first time Jamie transported them to spy from Gracie’s closet. She'd been pacing the bedroom with Jamie’s note in her hand, and Adam hadn’t been quick enough on the up-take.

“Just come home,” Jamie finally begs, when they reach a desolate impasse. “Come home, Adam.”

“Is this how you want me to remember you?” Adam counters, thinking of waking to Jamie in his bed.

Jamie won’t meet his gaze, and this is the moment Adam’s been fearing all along.

Adam clutches the by-now badly wrinkled slip in his vest pocket. He had clipped it from the yearbook the day he’d heard the news, as soon as he’d gotten home. His talisman to counteract a stolen piece of paper, a theft of which he hadn’t yet been made aware.

The instinctive nature of his actions, even from the outset, shakes Adam to the core.

He’s tired of running from who he is, what he could have done, what they should have been. There are few things he loves more than running, and even _fewer_ things Jamie loves more than watching him run.

“You don’t know what you did,” Jamie spits, as agitated as Frances at her least worked-up.

_That’s just it,_ Adam thinks, pulling Jamie into his arms. _I’ve always known._

They’re quiet in the back of Gracie’s car while she drives them to the abandoned quarry tunnel.

Stopped at the railroad crossing, waiting for a train to roar by, Adam takes hold of Jamie’s hand.

Adam doesn’t let Gracie get out of the car once she’s dropped them off. He tells her not to wait.

“Are you sure?” asks Gracie, with enough sorrow for them all. “How will you get home?”

Squeezing Jamie’s hand, Adam looks back over his shoulder only once. “I’m sure,” he says.

They hesitate just outside the tunnel’s entrance, facing each other. The darkness reaches, warm.

“I haven’t been honest,” Jamie says softly. “I’ve been inside already, and—and I’ve come back.”

Adam nods, remembering what he’d seen from a distance that day on the bridge. “I know that.”

Jamie squeezes Adam’s hand in turn. He tugs at it, imploring. “You could come with me.”

Closing his eyes, Adam remembers how cold and alone he’d felt lying on the riverbank until…

“Hey,” he says, not sure which of them he’s trying to reassure, “everything’s gonna be all right.”

“I know,” Jamie says, except he’s crying again, and nothing’s all right about that. “I know.”

Adam thinks about his mother and her despicable shadow, about the brother he wouldn’t mind never seeing again a day in his life. About how the only person he’d miss is Gracie, in spite of her clueless advances and gestures that come with an unspoken price.

“I’ll see you again,” Adam promises, his heart breaking at the thought of going back to them.

Jamie nods sadly, but he breaks into a brave, brilliant smile. “You’ll be fine, too, you know?”

Curling his hands tightly in his vest pockets, Adam knows he needs to do this before he loses his nerve. He withdraws them again, right hand clutching the slip of yearbook paper.

“Yeah, I know,” Adam says. “I’ve got something for you—” he presses the double-sided photo against Jamie’s chest, punctuating his words with a last, brief kiss “—_love_.”

Jamie stares down at the paper in his hand, but he doesn’t step back from Adam for an instant.

“Tell that to Gracie for me, too,” he manages, clutching the token gingerly in his shaking hand.

“I will,” Adam promises, and they’re kissing again before he can think better of lingering.

Jamie forces them to draw apart, removing his glasses. He studies the cracked lens, pensive.

“Here,” he says, placing them in Adam’s hand. “Remember me. I’m glad it was you, Adam.”

“Me too, Jamie,” Adam says, what’s left of his heart dissolving as Jamie turns to go. “Me too.”

Except he’s not paralyzed, not frozen to the spot, not tongue-tied. Not anymore. He’s propelling himself forward, like he should have done that night on the riverbank, into the tunnel.

“Adam?” gasps Jamie, with startled joy, turning from where he’d paused in the beckoning dark.

“I’m yours,” Adam says, taking Jamie’s hand, and leads them toward whatever’s waiting there.


	2. Under Our Skin

** _Music_ **

Jamie has been leading Adam for so long that finally _being_ led by Adam is a relief.

They walk silently through the gloom, hand in hand. Just as Jamie is tempted to turn his head back toward the land of the living, to see if the light has faded, Adam says, “Don’t look back.”

“Why?” Jamie asks, tilting his head onto Adam’s shoulder as Adam’s arm encircles his waist.

Instead of a lecture on mythology, which probably doesn’t apply to them anyway, Adam sighs.

“I think they’ll find me there,” he says softly, his breath stirring the fog. “What’s left of me.”

Jamie processes the conjecture, drawing a swift, sad conclusion. “Gracie will be the one to…”

Adam gives a taut nod. “If she doesn’t leave like I told her to. She shouldn’t look back, either.”

Down the tunnel, somewhere far ahead, there is music. It’s so distant that Jamie can’t make out where it’s coming from. He’s reminded of the CD in Gracie’s car, the song that was starting just as she left them off at the railroad tracks. 

_There might be music on the street, forty floors below my feet._

Realizing that Adam still clutches the broken glasses in the hand he has against Jamie’s side, Jamie studies the double-sided yearbook clipping he still clutches in his. These objects are the last proof they carry of what they looked like in life. 

_Static from a dying star comes as far, comes as far._

“This is my fault,” Jamie whispers, his sight too tear-blurred for him to make out the shadows of others that pass, uncannily subdued, in the tunnel. “I made you want to make them suffer.”

“You didn’t,” Adam insists, rubbing the hollow of Jamie’s hip. “This was my choice. It’s not that I wanted to make them suffer. It’s just…”

Jamie doesn’t try to finish the sentence for him. He’s spoken for Adam one too many times, especially when the stakes are high. Instead, he waits, releasing Adam’s hand so he can slide his arm around Adam in kind.

Adam sighs, tilting his head, rubbing his cheek against Jamie’s hair. “There was nothing left.”

“If that turns out not to be true,” Jamie admits, tearful again, “then I’ve done wrong by you.”

Bringing them to a halt, Adam turns them so they’re facing each other. He puts the broken glasses in his hoodie pouch, then takes the clipping from Jamie’s hand and puts it in the pocket of Jamie’s borrowed shorts. He never once looks away from Jamie’s face.

“I meant what I said,” Adam murmurs solemnly. “Back there, just before I decided to die.”

Jamie knows it’s high time he repaid Adam—word for word, declaration for declaration.

“I love you, too,” he whispers into Adam’s mouth. They kiss and kiss, suspended there.

“For how long?” Adam asks tremulously when they break apart, an hour or a century later.

Jamie takes Adam’s face in both hands, brushing away the sparse, precious gloss of tears.

“Longer than we’ve been dead,” he says with conviction. “Longer than we were alive.”

“That makes no sense,” Adam mumbles, but suddenly he’s wearing his odd little smile.

“Nothing makes sense when you’re dead,” Jamie reminds him, laughing for sheer joy.

Pressing their foreheads together like he’s done countless times, Adam pulls Jamie closer.

“You asked me to come home, so we need to keep going. Help me find where that is.”

** _Heaven_ **

They find Frances huddled against the wall at a bend in the tunnel, more than a shadow.

“Hey, dead boyfriends,” she taunts, sneering at them. “Who called this shot, anyway?”

“Fuck you, Frances,” Adam replies, but there’s less malice in it than there used to be.

“Fuck you, Adam,” Frances parrots, folding her arms against her chest. “So, does he?”

Jamie doesn’t like where this is going, but he holds fast to Adam’s arm and listens. 

_Random voices on a show_, the song went on. _Wisdom of the radio._

“Does he what?” asks Adam, with unfeigned innocence. There’s a sweetness to the way he’s always been baffled by seeming non-sequiturs, lost until the sentiment is spelled out.

“Fuck you,” Frances groans, rolling her eyes as her head tips back. “Does he _fuck_—”

“Why?” Adam shoots back, sounding more sarcastic than stung. “Do you want to watch?”

Jamie studies Frances. She pulls a nasty, troubling face that turns huffy instead of mad.

“Thanks for the offer, bitch boy,” she yawns behind her hand, just for show, “but I’ll pass.”

“Your loss,” says Jamie, wryly, hoping to lighten the mood. “What are you doing here?”

“I got tired,” Frances replies waspishly. “This goes on and on and on. You thought you were doing me a _favor_ when you brought me here?”

Scuffing at the ash-colored dust with the toes of Adam’s old sneakers, Jamie can only shrug.

“It’s what we’re supposed to do when we have nothing left. I didn’t know how else to help.”

Adam steps between Jamie and Frances, endearingly protective. He knows it’s his turn, so Jamie lets him go on leading. Neither of them had ever been good at that in the literal sense, not unless you counted Adam’s racing victories.

“I called the shot,” Adam admits, tone suggesting he’s tired of Frances and her shit. “Happy?”

“What do you think?” Frances snaps, taking an ineffectual swipe at Adam’s shin. “Are _you_?”

Jamie holds his breath as Adam thinks for several seconds. He hasn’t even asked himself that.

“I’m getting there,” Adam tells her, reaching back for Jamie’s hand. “It’s a work in progress.”

Frances darts her eyes to meet Jamie’s. “What about you? Is the honeymoon over yet, Moony?”

“I can’t remember a time I didn’t feel like this about…” Jamie emphatically shakes his head. 

“This is depressing,” Frances scoffs, tugging at her dress. “No wonder nobody likes you two.”

Adam glances from Frances to Jamie, and then back to Frances. “What aren’t you telling us?”

Acting on impulse, Jamie wraps his arms around Adam from behind. He wonders if Frances has ever loved anyone. If she’s ever been loved.

Instead of lashing out in response to seeing them like this, Frances sobs, caving in on herself.

“What if my parents are here?” she demands plaintively. “I can’t find my knife. I’m scared.”

_They promise heaven’s down the line_, the lyrics continue. _Even mine, even mine_.

“They’re not your home,” Jamie says soothingly, knowing it’s cold comfort. “Find your own.”

Frances falls silent for a while, fussing with her hair, and then mutters, “I don’t know how.”

Adam looks like he’s at a loss for words, like he feels guilty for always causing Frances grief.

“You could come with us until you figure it out,” he suggests tentatively. “Safety in numbers.”

“There’s nothing out here that can hurt us, dipshit,” Frances says hopelessly, “except ourselves.”

“Then cut it out,” Jamie says, letting go of Adam so he can haul Frances to her feet. “C’mon.”

“Better grab him again right quick,” Frances spits, shrugging Jamie off. “He might go _poof_.”

Adam grabs Jamie’s wrist so quickly that it’s a thrill. “You just want everyone to be as miserable as you are. What’s the point now we’re all dead?”

“That’s some really zen crap, McCormick,” Frances replies, but she cracks a twisted smile.

Jamie has never heard Frances address Adam with anything but insults, or call him anything but slurs. Even her referring to Jamie by the nickname he hated hadn’t been shocking.

“What’s wrong?” Frances retorts, waving a hand in front of Jamie’s face. “Out of words?”

“Are you coming with us or not?” Adam asks her, and then gives Jamie an imploring look.

** _Message_ **

As his eyes acclimate further, Jamie realizes they’re not in a tunnel anymore. He’d helped Adam convince Frances to walk with them, although at some point her petulant commentary had stopped—as had her footfalls. Neither he, nor Adam had looked back.

The fog is still everywhere, obscuring the other souls that now pass them in every direction. And Jamie can still hear the song playing, fragments filtering through at ever greater intervals.

_Put out the lights, put out the lights, put out the lights on London city. The dark is warm, let me take you in my arms._

“It’s like a field,” Adam says, abruptly staring upward. “Jamie, I think I can see the stars.”

“It still isn’t cold,” Jamie replies, hoping that’s sufficient agreement. “I don’t know why.”

The next discernible shape that emerges from the mist is a looming sycamore. Jamie can tell by the quickening of Adam’s breath that he sees it, too. He clings to Adam’s hand as they approach.

“Tall plants in the middle of fields always freaked me out,” Adam says, “but trees never did.”

“I never thought about how plants in fields make me feel,” Jamie replies, touching the bark.

“I’m going to climb,” Adam announces, jumping up beneath the lowest branch several times. “I want to see if anything’s out there.”

Jamie grabs Adam by the hips, supporting him until he’s able to climb fully onto the branch.

“What can you see?” Jamie asks exhaustedly, collapsing in a heap at the base of the trunk.

“Lights,” Adam answers, faint with exertion and wonder. “Way off in the distance. Lots.”

“Come down,” Jamie urges, toppling into the grass. “I’m tired. I see what Frances meant.”

Adam drops beside Jamie, landing with a grunt. He unfolds his limbs and rolls over, skin fever-hot, pressing as close against Jamie as he had when they’d shared Adam’s cramped mattress.

“I’ve been thinking about what Frances said,” Adam says quietly. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“Is _what_ what we’re doing?” Jamie laughs, kissing Adam on the lips. “Fucking?”

Nodding, Adam scrunches his forehead like the thought hurts. “I hope it’s…more, too?”

Jamie pulls Adam on top of himself, satisfied when Adam gasps and rubs against him.

“It’s fucking,” Jamie whispers, clutching Adam tightly, “_and_ more. We don’t need…”

“Don’t need what?” Adam prompts, sounding strained like the first time they did this. “Words?”

“I was going to say clothes,” Jamie teases, tugging at Adam’s running pants, “but yeah, true.”

Getting naked with only a tree for cover and grass for bedding should’ve felt strange. Instead, Jamie recalls that there had been stars overhead the first time they’d lain together on the ground.

_Put out the lights, put out the lights, put out the lights on London city. Keep the creatures safe from harm._

“What’s the matter?” Adam asks, cupping Jamie’s cheek once they’re both bare. “You seem…”

“I keep hearing lines of that song,” Jamie admits between fretful kisses. “From Gracie’s car.”

“I know,” Adam whimpers, uninterested in reversing things when Jamie pins him. “Me too.”

Jamie bends to kiss him again, moving against Adam with the languid pace of the music. They could be doing other things, using their hands and mouths—but Adam is already shaking.

“No matter what,” Jamie vows, lapping at the hollow of Adam’s throat, “I’ll protect you.”

“I’ll protect you, too,” Adam says dazedly. He uses his palms to press Jamie’s hips down tighter against his, rocking them together. “Oh my God.”

“Did you…” Jamie can’t find words, not as the jolt of pleasure seizes him. “_Are_ you…”

Adam nods wildly, his fingers digging so hard into Jamie’s hips that it summons the memory of pain. He writhes under Jamie, stifling a broken cry against Jamie’s shoulder. There’s nothing to prove that they’ve come, no trace like the tears they can still shed.

It’s almost too quiet as they calm each other with increasingly gentle, drowsy kisses. Adam breathes awe-struck endearments in Jamie’s ear. Jamie wonders if any of the other souls can hear them, or the music—or if they even care.

_Every place that I have been leaves its message on my skin. So many prophecies and signs—so little time, so little time._

“Wonder if it’s Gracie’s way of giving us words,” Adam says sleepily. “Like she’s still driving.”

“Maybe,” Jamie replies. He holds Adam closer, imagining an hourglass that’s nearly run out.

** _Home_ **

Jamie wakes to a kick against his ankle. He lifts his head from Adam’s chest and looks up.

Adam flutters his eyelids, slower to wake, and instantly closes them again with a groan.

“For fuck’s sake!” shouts Frances, scornfully, turning her back on them. “Get dressed!”

“Guess you got to watch, huh,” Jamie says, sitting up, fishing for his clothes. “Kind of.”

Grabbing his clothes, Adam retreats to the other side of the tree. “What the fuck, Frances!”

“Ooh, that’s different,” Frances says, yawning like she’s bored. “Nice change from the usual.”

“What the Fuck Frances is a mouthful,” Jamie points out, pulling his t-shirt on after his shorts.

“I don’t know,” Adam mutters, emerging from hiding fully dressed. “It might grow on me.”

Frances turns to face them with a pinched, disapproving frown. “You dress worse than I do.”

“At least we’re not covered in blood,” Adam shoots back, arranging his puffer vest over his hoodie. He checks his hoodie pouch to make sure Jamie’s glasses are still there. “What’s that about? You don’t have to leave it. You’re not murdering anybody out here, are you?”

Instead of tears or anger, Frances starts to laugh. She laughs so hard that it’s as terrifying as when she’s screaming and raging, so hard her eyes begin to stream anyway.

“Jamie, I get it,” she gasps. “It’s all a joke, isn’t it? Bitch boy here is _quite_ the punch-line!”

“Why did you come back?” Jamie asks, realizing Adam’s trying to take his hand. He catches hold, twining their fingers together. “I was hoping—”

“It’s boring as hell out here,” Frances seethes, spinning on her heel, marching ahead. “C’mon.”

They’ve been walking through increasingly taller grass for what feels like hours when Jamie realizes he can hear the music again. Something about it seems off. It’s the refrain over and over.

_Put out the lights, put out the lights, put out the lights on London city. The dark is warm, let me take you in my arms. Put out the lights, put out the lights, put out the lights on London city. Keep the creatures safe from harm._

“Why d’you think it’s stuck on repeat?” Adam hisses under his breath. “That’s three full times.”

“Don’t know,” Jamie admits uneasily. “Maybe the CD’s skipping or something. The car’s old.”

“Your fag-hag’s taste in music is shit,” Frances says, not turning her head to look back at them.

“Leave Gracie alone,” Adam scolds, sounding comically like his mother. “She’s trying to help.”

Beyond Frances, who’s come to a halt so that she can stare down Adam, Jamie spots something.

“Shut up, both of you,” he says urgently, walking toward a sudden glow on the horizon. “Look.”

“Sun’s coming up, big deal,” Frances sneers. “Want another go, bitch boy? I don’t need matches.”

“The sun doesn’t exist here,” Adam blurts, pushing past Frances to follow Jamie. “Does it?”

“Maybe it’s different times of day and night here, for different people,” Jamie suggests, baffled.

Without warning, Frances dashes past them, with her eyes wide and unkempt hair flying wild.

“Jamie,” she exclaims, panting as she runs, “I think you were right! I can see it, I can _see_—”

As light spills over the horizon, blinding Jamie and Adam, Frances is entirely eclipsed by it.

“See what?” Adam asks plaintively, blinking at the space just ahead where Frances had been.

Jamie knows the answer, knows the word, but he’s afraid to say it like he said it to Frances. If Adam’s hereafter is destined to be different from his, if he looks back or lets go—then Adam, too, might vanish.

“Don’t let go of my hand,” Jamie begs, tears already streaming down his cheeks. “Please don’t.”

Adam uses his free hand to turn Jamie’s face toward him, away from the harsh light of morning.

“Why would I do that?” he asks desperately, crying just like Jamie. “Why would I ever do that?”

Jamie steps as close as he can, throwing his arms around Adam’s neck. He feels Adam’s arms close around his waist, pulling him in tight. They stand locked together in the ominous glow, trembling.

“I don’t know what to do,” Adam says brokenly. “I don’t want us to just…” He draws a heaving, startled breath pressing his lips to Jamie’s ear. “Jamie, give me something. Quick.”

Jamie nuzzles Adam’s cheek, his chest flooding with nervous hope. “Like what, Adam?”

“Words,” Adam says with fierce resolve. “Lots of them. New ones. Tell me about…”

Epiphany breaks over Jamie like dawn in all its splendor. He shouldn’t have been afraid.

“I always imagined it would be a place where you can run, a place with lots of windows so I can watch you. Your old house is so small, Adam. Small and haunted, even before I was there to haunt it. My old house is haunted, too, haunted by my mom’s useless prayers and that fucking tacky Nativity set. I liked your house better than mine, but it was full of ghosts. Your bed was too small. I don’t want that for us.”

“Me neither,” Adam agrees, holding Jamie even tighter. “I want a place where I can run, too. I want you to be able to watch me from anywhere in—in _our_ house. I want to see you in the bedroom window. I want to see you while I run to you. I want to be the reason you stop waiting.”

“Home,” says Jamie, like he means it, in Adam’s mouth. They kiss and kiss, suspended there.

“Thank you,” Adam murmurs, drawing back to give Jamie a radiant smile. “Do you see it?”

Jamie glances sidelong into the sunrise, startled to find that the horizon-line has changed. 

“Yes. Also, I think…” He listens for the music, but it’s gone. “Gracie finally got home, too.”

Adam kisses Jamie’s cheek, untangling them except for their always-joined hands. “Let’s go.”


End file.
